Technically it's more Hotline Miami with more variety, more masks and more scenarios. However, it truly fails in everything it tries to do in comparison to the original. The story is more convoluted than it needs to be, the focus changes so fucking much I had no fucking clue who I was in the end and what exactly this game was supposed to tell me. The "Flow" of the first title is nowhere to be found. Enemy placement and level design goes against what the player want to do - shoot shit and play aggressiv. Where Hotline Miami feels like the player has complete freedom on how he/she plays, the sequel feels like it forces the player to act in a certain way and punishes you if you go off the beaten track. The masks feel far more gimmicky than useful and by the end, it was more frustrating than fun.

This game embodies an adrenaline rush. This hard-hitting, almost rythym-like, blood bath of a game truly sets the bar of what an "Action" game can be. While it aims to criticise grandiose violence by doing it in an exaggerate way, it didn't quite nail its message. The story is kind of a mess and focuses more on style and presentation instead of adding any real context. The story feels more like a backdrop - a means for the player to justify his actions and continue playing. The secret ending did not help the story at fucking all.

In the end, this trial by error gameplay is just too damn good. Play it.

It's like the game is too afraid to do anything interesting. In order to avoid the game becoming confusing or frustrating to the player, Donut Country only scratches the surfaces of the mechanical potential it offers. Sure, the aesthetics and polish is definitely noteworthy and should be praised, but the puzzle design lacks any flavor and results in the game becoming a boring slideshow to play.

SPOILER AHEAD

Throwing a boss fight at the end of the game doesn't really radiate any confidence in the game's design. It's disappointing to see a developer introduce a bizarre, "Katamari-like" premise and aura to the game, only for them to fall back to conventional game set pieces.

By the heads of tha polarizing group Arcane Kids (idk, you all can make an opinion on them) comes a Fetus of a would-be game: An alpha, locked inside the internet archives while Arcane Kids fizzled out of existence to make big commerical games like... Donut County... and Neon White... :(.
Stumbled upon it after watching the postmortem/making-of of Ballistic Zen, Perfect Stride is a love-letter to the "weird shmooving" sub-genre, offsprung by the lovely engine quirks from Quake, CS and tha classics, blessing us with cool stuff like bunny-hopping and surfing. You surf (literally on a board) around, horizontally ungulate the mouse to gain more speed to be more, well, rad. Cruising through the kaleidoscopic-esque landscape, smokin a cig, just vibe. For what the game is (unfinished), it's remarkable, it's admirable. Yet, it always feels like it's about to burst from it seams. It's an alpha so i guess it's expected for the game to feel fragile. Just dont stare at it for too long, or else it's evaporate :).
Also I gotta preference this since it's nowhere really said, but
MAJOR EPILEPSY WARNING
The game starts by throwing you at a triangle of RGB pixels before barraging you with a swarm of quotes and flashing colors and the game just doesn't say like "hey yeah this might not be cool for you"

One of the mandatory games you just have to play (I dont make the rules).

Got some of the sickes moment-to-moment gameplay out there, but some of the encounters can feel weird to downright mean-spirited. (like damn homie, you gotta calm down with those Pinkies and Spectres) Although Bosses kinda suck ass and the more open-ish levels just dont feel good at all, hitting a rocket launcher on a cacademon and killing it gives me some good ass serotonin and that alone makes this game hella worth to play.

I'm not a purist so I played this game with GZDoom cuz I wanna look up and down and get other QoL features.

One of the best narratives I've come across in games. Using the "walking sim" genre as a means to inadvertently hyper-focus on the narrative, environment and setting is genius. Walking through the wildernis while talking with "Delilah" through the walkie-talkie is a suprisingly enganging and cathartic experience, albeit sometimes repetitive during the later half of the game.

At it's core, the game is about escapism and confronting your past and your problems. While I vividly remember being upset and let down at the ending (no spoiler) of the game when I first played it in ~2017, in retrospect cannot find any other ending that ties together the core themes of the story quite as well as the ending found in the retail version.

INSIDE is a 3 hour 2D plattformer. The gameplay is deceptively simple, the puzzles are almost trivial and it is a very linear experience. Despite all that, it is such a strong experience that I always come back to. Playing INSIDE for the first time is like looking down into a dark hole: You don't know where it leads to, but you feel compelled to just. jump. in.

The sense of the unknown is what makes INSIDE just work. For three hours, it confidently knows what it wants to do and be and does it perfectly with insane amounts of polish. Play it.

It uses its mechanics ""elegantly"" (as in, it's very simple and efficient for the player to understand and use), yet by the later half of the game, its kinda held back from its limited mechanics. This also impacts the boss mechanics: While it makes use of all of the players toolset, some can feel relativitly janky (see lava slime boss). It doesn't help that the bosses dont feel like bosses, but rather like "short super-meat-boy like puzzle levels". By that I mean the player is just trying to quickly go through the first 30 seconds of the encounter and try to hit its weakspot without dying. Doing so otherwise complicates the fight unnecessarly and just makes it way too hard and tedious than it needs to be.

It's an alright game with a cool hyperfocus on one mechanic, but that is pretty much it.

Y'all remember when games came with actual manuals? Like these quirky little booklets, filled with handy tips, tutorials, lore enrichments and endearing artworks? Sure, as time went on and game's hardware evolved, it made a lot more sense to embed the tutorials, lore and other fun factoids straight into the game. But with it, the manual slowly shifted and morphed into an advert pamphlet, begging you to join some online programs or subscription services.
I say all this cuz' playing The Legend of Zelda made me remember the importance of manuals and how it plays an integral part in the Legend of Zelda.

Which is why I advice any person who wants to play this game to ATLEAST play it with the manual. Me, being the clueless smooth brain out here, decided to just raw-dog the game at the beginning without anything. Just me and the stupid-ass-no-damage-making-"It's dangerous to go alone, take this"-wooden-ass-sword, aimlessly wandering around the map just getting demolished by the over-world's mob of death. The manual at least gave me a general outline on where to go and what to do, but you'll only get so far with it. Good luck finding the entrance to some dungeon on the left side of one specific rock, cuz' yes that's very obvious and not obtuse at all. And if you even manage to get into said dungeon, prepare to fend off so many god damn enemies that the NES can't handle it.

Obtuseness and janky combat aside, the childlike wonders of yesterdays injected into this game makes me reminiscent of days when I would just run around the local hills and forests of my area, with a stick in hand that served as the amplifier of my fantasy situations that my imagination was concocting at the spur of the moment...

...Man I wanna be small with stick again.